Howard M. Welland è nato il 2 ottobre del 1953 a Madison nel Wisconsin e dopo aver vissuto a Chicago fino ai 18 anni si è trasferito a New York dove ha vissuto con la moglie Chrystal Henner e le loro due figlie gemelle.

 Laureatosi all'Università del Minnesota è stato un agente assicurativo per breve tempo è stato un giocatori di poker professionista che si dilettava non poco anche con gli scacchi, il back gammon ed il gin.

 Ha imparato il bridge per avere una chance di lavoro alla Borsa di New York ma è poi divenuto il proprietario del famoso ristorante "Cru" che ha una delle enoteche più fornite di tutta la "Mela" con oltre 65.000 bottiglie in cantina. 

 L'elenco delle sue affermazioni in campo nazionale comprende tra le altre: il Mitchell del 2005, la Reisinger del 2001, il Silodor del 2007 in coppia con Giorgio Duboin, la Spingold del 2003, la Vanderbilt del 2007 in coppia con la moglie e quella del 2013, anno nel quale è anche arrivato secondo nella NEC CUP.

 In campo internazionale ha vinto la prima edizione della Warren Buffet Cup, i Cavendish Team del 2001 e del 2005, ha preso l'argento nel Transnational Open Teams del 2005 e agli Europei Open a Squadre Miste del 2003 in coppia con la moglie Chrystal dalla quale si è separato qualche tempo dopo.

World Grand Master, Roy è stato eletto dall'ACBL giocatore dell'anno nel 2007 ed ha ricevuto nel 2010 il Sidney H. Lazard Jr. Sportsmanship Award.

Nel 2013 ha vinto gli Europei Open a Coppie  e nel 2014 lo Jacoby ai Campionati di Primavera americani giocando in coppia con l'attuale compagna Sabine Auken.

Nel 2014 e 2015 hanno vinto i Campionati Italiani a Squadre Miste e nel 2014 i World Transnational Mixed Teams.

Ultimo successi della coppia la Spingold nel 2016 e l'argento agli Europei Open 2017 nel Coppie Miste.

Interestingly, Welland might not have found bridge if a regular poker game he played in had not been held in a bridge club. Welland arrived in New York 23 years ago as an 18-year-old. He was living in Chicago at the time. One day he and a friend decided they would spend New Year’s Eve at Studio 54, a famous disco in New York. Welland arrived in the city and never left.

Always a games player, Welland played chess, backgammon, poker and gin, among others.

One day he decided he wanted to get into the options trading business, but he didn’t have the right educational background. He played poker regularly at a bridge club, and his poker games often went on so long that he would meet the bridge crowd setting up for their game in the morning. One day he was talking to the bridge group and told them of his desire to work on Wall Street. One of them mentioned that a lot of good bridge players had been hired to trade options.

Welland immediately started kibitzing the rubber bridge game at the Manhattan Bridge Club, and after a couple of months he felt he was ready to play in the duplicate game. “I had a little bit of an advantage,” Welland says, “because I had played similar games. It wasn’t that difficult to pick up the rudiments.”

During 1986, Welland was a regular player in the Manhattan Bridge Club duplicate game, and he accumulated such a pile of rating point slips – the old way of keeping track of club masterpoints – that someone suggested he send them in to ACBL Headquarters.

It turned out that his collection of rating point slips amounted to 94 masterpoints, making him the 1986 winner of the national Ace of Clubs rookie category. After a couple of years of bridge play, Welland was finally offered a job on Wall Street.

Unfortunately, he was due to start just about the time of the stock market crash of October 1987. He had to wait until the following year to get started, but he has been enormously successful and now runs his own company – Wilcris Trading, named after William and Christopher, the twin sons he and Christal Henner-Welland had seven years ago.

Once he started his options career, Welland focused on Wall Street rather than bridge, but in the summer of 2000 he sponsored his first team in the Spingold. By the fall of the following year, he was a North American champion – winner of the Reisinger Board-a-Match Teams, arguably the toughest event on the ACBL calendar.

Welland’s regular partner these days is Bjorn Fallenius, a veteran player who represented Sweden, his native country, many times in international competition. He and Welland knew each other from rubber
bridge games, and they have formed a tough partnership over the last three and a half years.

Welland says he and Christal don’t play much together these days, but they did early in his bridge career. “She is a saint,” says Welland, noting that they have more than a dozen regional wins playing together. Christal is a fine player in her own right. She was captain of the winning Open Swiss Teams at the 2003 Spring NABC in Philadelphia – and she’s on a strong team in the Spingold at this tournament: Mike Kamil, Swedish stars Peter Bertheau and Fredrik Nystrom and Italians Claudio Nunes and Fulvio Fantoni, reigning World Open Pairs champs.

Besides bridge Welland has a keen interest in the food business. He has a financial interest in two New York restaurants – Hearth and Barbuto – and is a wine connoisseur (just ask Zia).

In 2010 he received the Sidney H. Lazard Jr. Sportsmanship Award.

In to 2013 Roy has won the Vanderbilt Cup (NABC), arrived second in the NEC CUP and won the European Open Pairs, in 2014 he won the Jacoby at the Spring NABC paired your new life partner Sabine Auken.

In 2014 and 2015 the famous pair won the Italian Mixed teams and the World Transnational Mixed Teams

Last them successes are in 2016 the Spingold and in 2017 the silver medal in Mixed Pairs at European Open.

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